Good Mourning

Stories

There is this game called Mafia. It’s played in groups–the more, the better between an informed minority and an uninformed majority. Some players get Mafia cards, others Citizen ones and they play. The Mafia pretends not to be the Mafia, while the Citizens try to guess who’s the gang. The main point of the game is to fool everyone.

Can you guess two countries in which this game is the most popular? Right, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

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There are many common things between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Culture, mentality, temper and drama are only some of them. But for me, the main thing that proves the presence of genetic likeness between these two nations is the maniacal obsessiveness they suffer from.

While reading this article and especially the first comment under it, I couldn’t stop thinking about processes we have going on this side of the border.

“Genocide,” say Armenians, “is our tragedy and it has to be recognized.”

“Khojali,” we reply, “and our losses are what matters.”

And it’s not about who’s right or wrong, what’s fake and what’s not. It’s about “priorities and proportions” as well as goals and the ways of reaching them.

Tragedies should become lessons (as they do in civilized societies), respected and remembered as part of history. However, for our obsessive cultures our tragedies become idée fixe, which keep TODAY, its problems and tragedies in the background.

Therefore, beaten, killed, or jailed journalists, terrorist attacks in universities, health care tragedies (not afraid to call it so), total corruption, unemployment, lowest rates in education, ignored law violations and other things that actually matter, are forever destined to be number two on the list of priorities. And in a best-case scenario, if they’re lucky, they can get compared or linked to the Tragedy Number one.

For some unknown reason we don’t find building democracy, educating people, fixing economy or actually implementing dusted laws as important as the recognition of some issues and preventing the recognition of others.

I’m not saying there were no attempts to do anything. My point is–if the attempt doesn’t lead to a positive result, then it’s not being done right or, in other words, it’s useless.

Recognition of past tragedies and losses, the return of Karabakh or it’s recognition as an independent republic will make us prove ourselves right, rise up and look around. But what are we going to see? The mess we forgot to clean while protesting in front of the embassies, writing articles, proving each other’s lies, looking through uncountable amount of photos of murdered children. Will any of that show us the way to fix things or give us a chance to start over? That’s the question we should ask ourselves.

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Humanity has always been inventing things with one main goal–to make life easier. Whether it’s a lamp that makes our home bright, or a car which brought more comfort to our lives and used to save time, or a cell phone that allows us to call/text/note/record/take pictures and, well, an uncountable amount of other things.

Games were invented to make our lives easier as well–they’re supposed to make us laugh, or run, think, or pretend. But what they are definitely not supposed to do is make us forget about the REALITY, which today is not heartwarming in the least, on neither side of the border.

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Comments

scary azeri

21 May 2010

A very good piece, NIgyar. Well done.

Fatalin

21 May 2010

Thanks for the feedback, guys, and George, it really means a lot that you understood what I meant. I hope others will do too.

Kostya

19 May 2010

to say that I like this article means to say nothing! I double, tripple, 10 times like it! Thanks for the post!

Erik

18 May 2010

Nigar - great piece! George - good point!

George

18 May 2010

My initial reaction was anger: how could you call a genocide not important. But on the second look, yes, your article touched our usual trigger points, but I guess it asks the hard questions that we are afraid to ask even ourselves. And while I still think that the tragedies should not be forgotten, but yes, that should not be an excuse for not taking responsibility for present day problems. Thank you for the challange. One thing I learned during my long life: if something triggers me, it mans there is a problem hidden that I am afraid to face, and so it means I have something to learn. So please challenge and 'trigger' us more often